


What Are Friends For?

by Lizardlicks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Awkward Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Crush, First Kiss, Humanstuck, M/M, Middle School, bad break up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24897577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardlicks/pseuds/Lizardlicks
Summary: Eridan is lucky to have such a good friend.
Relationships: Eridan Ampora/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 8
Kudos: 68





	What Are Friends For?

When you are eleven years old, Karkat Vantas transfers to your school mid-semester. He’s loud. Not just his voice, but the way he stomps when he walks, how he slams his bag and his books or the doors. He won’t say why he switched schools. He gives a different bogus story each time and you know it’s bogus because it’s always something outlandish and at least a little bit vulgar.

“I fucked your mom.”

“I kicked the principal right in her cooter.”

“I tea-bagged the teacher’s dog.”

He seems to be an endless font of hilarious inappropriateness, and you like the way he says fuck a lot. He’s the exact kind of public school kid you overheard your mother fretting about “being a bad influence,” on you to your dad. You can not _wait_ to be his friend.

He tells you to fuck off when you sit next to him at the lunch table, but he says that to everyone, so you stay anyway. Karkat doesn’t leave either.

Later that same year, Vriska Serket would pull you into a closet at a friend’s birthday party and french kiss you. You wish you could say you did something suave and sexy, like you kissed her back, but all you really did was freeze up and squeak, “eep!” out of total shock. Still, she holds your hand the next day at school, and tells everyone that you’re boyfriend and girlfriend, and that you kiss aaaaaaaall the time (which is not at all true; you try kissing her exactly one other time, and she acts annoyed).

Karkat is unimpressed. He says that he’d rather kiss the urinal in the boys room on the second floor. The one by Miss Hodwin’s class, that has a drain problem. Karkat, you decide, is definitely jealous. You assure him everything is okay between you two, and that you will still have time to be bros. He rolls his eyes at you and affectionately elbows your side.

Vriska “dates” you for about three weeks, and then unceremoniously dumps you by arriving at class one morning holding _Tavros Nitram’s_ hand. You are understandably confused, and a little upset. When you confront her, all Vriska has to say is, “I wanted to make him jealous, duh. No hard feelings, Ampora!”

There’s lots of hard feelings, actually, but Vriska tells you that’s your problem, then proceeds to act like you don’t exist for the rest of the week.

If this were a movie you might have been stoic about it. Or maybe you would have planned the perfect revenge, some sort of hilarious hijinks that would have ended in a food fight and Vriska being humiliated in front of the whole school.

Your life isn’t a movie, and instead you lock yourself in the far stall in the boys bathroom (the one on the _first_ floor, you aren’t that much of a masochist) and bawl your eyes out. When someone finally comes to retrieve you, the stomp-stomp of the foot falls are all at once comforting and terrifying. Karkat pauses outside of the stall, and you mentally brace for a verbal browbeating.

He sighs and asks, “you want some ice cream?”

“Y… yeah?”

Tentatively, you uncurl from the floor and unlock the stall door. Karkat looks you up and down then takes your hand, not even stopping to consider the snot on your sleeve.

“Come on, they got new flavors at Zahhak's. You’re paying.”

**Author's Note:**

> Midnight word vomit. Will there be more? Your guess is as good as mine.


End file.
